Evaporators are commonly known in the prior art. These are most generally rotary in nature and are used to evaporate substances, generally solvents, when chemical or pharmaceutical products are concentrated or distilled. With these evaporators, the liquid substances to be evaporated are placed into the hollow chamber of a rotatable flask (vessel), usually submerged in a heating bath of water or oil. By rotating the vessel, a thin liquid film is formed on the inside of the vessel and the substances, especially the solvent, evaporate from this film. Some of the solvent or substance also evaporates directly from the surface of the liquid that is in the rotating vessel. The vapor is conveyed from the vessel by a vacuum line connected to the vessel. Generally the vacuum line is joined to the vessel by a rotatable connection with the connection site being sealed off by a rotary gasket. The negatives associated with prior art evaporators is the amount of space necessary to accommodate all the components, as well as the drawbacks associated with a rotary gasket, necessitated by the 360 degree rotation of the vessel.
Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide a reciprocating evaporator used in chemical processes (most notably radiochemistry) which is small, durable, inexpensive to produce and eliminates the need for a rotary gasket, has adjustable rotation, yet provides quality results.
When examining the size of equipment used in a chemical process, in no other field is size as important as in Radiochemistry. Radiochemicals are used in the field of nuclear medicine as tracers in the diagnosis and treatment of many diseases. Some radiochemical processes (as well as many general chemical processes) require the use of an evaporator apparatus for efficient evaporation of solvents. Commercially available prior art evaporators are large and cumbersome. This large size poses a problem in radiochemical syntheses, because these processes must be performed in shielded enclosures, due to the radioactive chemicals in use. These enclosures are very expensive and their price is determined by the volume contained within. Thus, equipment used inside the enclosure should be of minimal size to reduce the enclosure cost and to allow efficient use of shielded space for other components. Unfortunately, the motor drives utilized in prior art evaporators are large because they must overcome the friction found in the rotary gasket that allows a vacuum to be applied to the rotating flask. Further, typical evaporators use rotation consisting of full, repeated 360 degree cycles. Even when space is not a major concern, having a small efficient evaporator would allow any lab to make more efficient use of its space and resources.
Therefore, in light of the shortcomings of the prior devices, there exists a significant demand for an evaporator that is small yet efficient.